


Second Gifts

by DameRuth



Series: Bliss [22]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Multi, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:20:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24579697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DameRuth/pseuds/DameRuth
Summary: Every relationship goes through changes, and every union has (sometimes) unexpected ramifications. Link-y goodness from the Bliss!verse as Nine, Rose, and Jack encounter some new dimensions to what they share.[Continuing the Teaspoon imports, original posting dates 2007.12.17-2008.02.11.]
Relationships: Ninth Doctor/Jack Harkness/Rose Tyler
Series: Bliss [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/14078
Kudos: 24





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A ficathon fill. My prompts were:
> 
> "Preferred Doctor/timeline: Nine.  
> Three things I want to see in my fic: Threesome relationship that's not just sex, a little consensual kink, Rose being a voyeur a little. One thing I don’t want: Unhappy ending/foreshadowing."
> 
> I wasn't sure about writing "kink," since I don't consider it my forte, but was told by wendymr/wmr that weird-mind-sex-stuff would count -- which I *can* do. A simple h/c scene ended up ballooning into a "building block" tale for my AU Bliss!verse, which I hope is okay.

( _Catch!_ ) the Doctor told Jack wordlessly through the link, as he tossed the data crystal in a high, glittering arc.  
  
It went right over the heads of the two Sssen’an soldiers who’d just barreled into their path from a side corridor; Rose and the Doctor were cut off from their goal, but Jack, who’d been slightly in the lead, was still in the clear.  
  
Jack’s hand rose up to catch the crystal as neatly as if he’d thrown it to himself — which he almost had. The three of them had been running in tight synchronization, sharing coordination and awareness. That rapport persisted even as Jack closed his fingers around the crystal, spun, and ran like hell down the dim corridor, emergency lamps in the walls providing the only illumination. He didn’t worry about leaving Rose and the Doctor behind — these two soldiers were the last of the infiltration team sent to sabotage the power station, and they would be after whoever had the crystal.  
  
Jack felt a surge of energy as his crewmates sent extra support. There were limits to what human muscle and nerve could achieve, but Jack was working at the extreme upper end of that performance, thanks to the link.  
  
All the adrenalin coursing through his system didn’t hurt, either. If he didn’t get the crystal into the manual override comp very quickly, the power station was going to leave a very large crater in this planet’s surface. As in half-a-continent large — with all of them at ground zero. The Sssen’an were suicide troops, unfortunately. No chance of them calling off the chase to save their own skins.  
  
Jack turned a corner and nearly went over as he skidded in a puddle of water left from sprinklers triggered during the first phase of the attempted sabotage. A series of minor systems failures had been intended to distract attention from the real intent of fusing the central controls and precipitating a system overload. The only override that hadn’t been destroyed was a single manual panel deep in the complex, next to the core.  
  
If you’d told him two days ago that he’d be sprinting headlong _towards_ a power reactor core set to melt down, Jack would have laughed. He wasn’t laughing now, much as he felt like it in an adrenalin-dizzy way. He needed all of his air for running.  
  
The high-traction soles of Jack’s boots caught and held, even on the water-slick concrete, and he recovered. He could see the override panel now, down at the end of a corridor that looked a mile long. The panel was brightly lit with a rainbow of indictor lights, still fully functional and running on a self-contained backup system.  
  
Behind him, Jack heard a scrape and scuffle as his two pursuers also found the puddle; they didn’t recover as quickly as he had. Sssen’an typically went barefoot, and scales and claws wouldn’t find much purchase on a solid, slick surface. Hissed curses rang out and Jack pushed his straining muscles even harder to take advantage of his lead. All too soon he could hear the click of pursuing footfalls. He didn’t waste time looking back; they had no weapons, and this was a race to the finish. He’d either make it or he wouldn’t.  
  
Jack drew recklessly on every reserve he had, feeling Rose and the Doctor sending support freely, as fast as he could take it. Even with the increasing distance between them, the back of his mind was lit up inside from the steady pulse and glow of the link. They were following, he knew dimly, but were too far away to make much difference in the outcome. This mission was his.  
  
Details became visible as he got closer to the override panel, and he felt a burst of relief when he could see the numeric readout. Nearly five minutes left. He’d had horrible nightmare visions of getting this close just in time to see the last second tick itself down to zero, followed by the devastating inferno of annihilation as the core went up.  
  
Twenty yards, ten . . . God, he was going to make it. He could already see the slot for the crystal — all he needed to do was fit it into place and the encoded commands would take effect, triggering emergency shutdown protocols and blocking any further attempts to tamper with the system.  
  
The palm of his left hand slapped against the metal surface just to the side of the override panel, stopping him as he reached his goal. His right hand was shaking violently with adrenaline and exertion, but he carefully slipped the crystal into the proper slot, and felt it click home. Readouts sprang to life, confirming his success. Jack took a deep breath and grinned.  
  
Behind him, there was a scrape and clatter of claws and then something hit him in his right buttock and thigh with enough force to spin him bodily around and slam him against the wall. There was an indescribable tearing sensation, and his left knee buckled and gave out. He slumped and slid down the wall gasping, staring right at one of the Sssen’an. Just behind him, the second soldier skidded to a halt and glared down at Jack.  
  
The first man was down on hands and knees, having overbalanced and lost his footing on the slick floor in the process of striking Jack. The unsheathed claws of his right hand were smeared with Jack’s blood, black-red in the dimness. His head was precisely level with Jack’s . . . and he was already raising his arm for the next blow.  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hurt leads to comfort . . .

Time slowed and Jack, already slipping into shock, noticed several things in almost a single instant. First, the soldier on the floor was very handsome, in a high-cheekboned, reptilian way, someone Jack wouldn’t have hesitated to offer a drink in a bar, once upon a time — but those handsome features were distorted by an expression of absolute, deadly hatred. His buddy didn’t look any friendlier, but Jack didn’t have any attention to spare; he was trying to get his uncooperative arm into position to block the incipient claw-slash to his throat.  
  
And the link Jack had been sensing as a vivid flare of supportive light in his mind went suddenly pitch, raging black.  
  
The downed soldier froze and his eyes — fixed on Jack’s — opened wide just before he was jerked back and away, to be swung in a wide arc by his tail and slammed into the corridor’s side wall with shockingly efficient brutality by the tall, dark figure who’d come up unnoticed behind him.  
  
Jack didn’t even have enough time to flinch before a short length of metal pipe went whirring end-over-end through the air and connected with the standing soldier’s head. The combination of hollow thud and metallic _clang!_ was clearly audible, and the Sssen’an dropped like a sack of meal.  
  
The first soldier slid bonelessly down the wall to the ground as the Doctor carelessly let the man’s tail drop and turned to face Jack, his angular face cold, fierce and unreadable. Beside him, Rose, in full-on avenging goddess mode, had another length of pipe at the ready in her right hand, two more clenched in her left. Jack half expected to see the soldier she’d dropped turn to dust as she glared down at him. As it was, she was clearly ready to apply a second helping of metal to the head.  
  
_I think I’m very glad to be on their side,_ was Jack’s first, dazed thought, followed by, _I wonder where she got the pipe?_. Then time started to move at something closer to its normal speed and the numbness of his wounds began to fade into pain.  
  
Rose and the Doctor moved towards him with eerie synchronization, in perfect step for a moment, the link still black with their shared anger . . . which faded quickly to concern, and broke down into a more typical, looser configuration. For Jack, it was a very strange moment; he’d never really noticed just how tightly the link could bind them, since he was usually a part of it. The distance provided by the shock of his injuries had given him a rare glimpse of what the three of them must look like from the outside.  
  
The Doctor dropped to his knees next to Jack, pulling his sonic screwdriver from his coat pocket for an initial scan. No longer cold and unreadable, his expression was grim and worried, though he caught Jack’s eye and forced a half smile.  
  
“Well done, Captain,” was all he said, but Jack heard far more, in the tone of his voice and thoughts.  
  
“We’re all still here, anyway,” Jack replied, voice shaking from reaction and rising pain.  
  
The Doctor didn’t reply; his jaw tightened, and suddenly most of the pain vanished. At the same instant, the Doctor’s face paled, and a fine sweat broke out on his forehead.  
  
“Hey!” Jack protested weakly. “That’s _my_ pain. Give it back.”  
  
The Doctor, moving stiffly but with steady efficiency, rummaged in one pocket and pulled out a small, flat case. “Want, want, want. You humans, never happy.”  
  
Rose, reassured that the Doctor was taking care of emergency needs, reached for the comm button set in the wall next to the override.  
  
“Yeah, s’ Rose — we’ve got the last two of the infiltration team down here, they’re out cold but you’ll wanna get them in custody. And we need a medic, Jack’s been hurt.” She stopped and swallowed. Her voice, which had been decisive, if shaky, suddenly went smaller. “Please hurry, there’s . . . there’s a lot of blood.”  
  
Jack missed the reply, which was faint, because the Doctor rolled him slightly to one side so he could spray a thin, cold coat of emergency sealant over what Jack suspected were some pretty spectacular claw marks on his backside and right thigh. Even though the Doctor was doing his best to be gentle (not to mention trading neural sensations so that he was experiencing the bulk of Jack’s pain), the movement sent pain screaming through Jack’s left knee.  
  
Both men flinched, but the Doctor kept a firm hold on Jack for the ten seconds it took the sealant to set, and then settled him back down in his original position. With both hands free, he removed a hypospray from the case and applied it to the inside of Jack’s forearm. The pressurized injection mechanism thumped, delivering a dose of what Jack suspected — hoped — was painkiller.  
  
Rose knelt down beside them, worrying at her lower lip with her teeth. She rested a worried hand on Jack’s wrist.  
  
“They’re sending people, fast as they can,” she said, and tried for a reassuring smile.  
  
“Good,” the Doctor growled. “We need to get that knee splinted, soon as possible . . .”  
  
Jack felt a light brush of something intangible and the last pain went away, leaving him feeling float-y and disoriented.  
  
“Hey,” he protested again, trying his best to glare at Rose.  
  
She frowned back at him. “You’d do it for me,” she said, in her most stubborn tone.  
  
The Doctor took a deeper breath, and looked a fraction less pale. “S’ only till the painkiller kicks in,” he said, “which it’s startin’ to do.” Moving less stiffly, he stood and turned to glare over his shoulder at the Sssen’an. He didn’t seem particularly concerned about them, beyond verifying they weren’t going to be a threat.  
  
Rose followed his gaze, and her expression shifted. Jack caught a whisper of unease from her. She didn’t seem any more sympathetic towards their fallen enemies than the Doctor -- nor should she be, in Jack’s opinion, since the Sssen’an were here to extract revenge on behalf of a recently-deposed dictatorial regime. It was a suicide mission of pure spite, and Jack himself couldn’t care less whether they lived or died just so long as they didn’t take any innocent lives with them.  
  
The Doctor was giving off a calm, cool sensation that told Jack he and the Time Lord were in agreement. It wasn’t like both of them hadn’t seen and done worse (sometimes, to Jack’s lingering regret, for far less cause). But Rose wasn’t nearly as familiar with this sort of thing, and violence tended to disturb her.  
  
Jack started to ask her if she was all right, but just then the power station’s emergency crew arrived — some of the brave and necessary few who had stayed behind to hold their posts after the general evacuation, in hopes of defusing the situation. They were Sssen’an, same as the soldiers; this was an in-species bit of nastiness. Much of their first aid equipment was unsuitable for humans, but the Doctor commandeered materials for a quick field-splint of Jack’s leg, and a float stretcher. He pointedly left the fallen Sssen’an to the care — or lack of it — that their own people chose to provide.  
  
After that, things got decidedly blurry for Jack, as the powerful general painkiller the Doctor had given him took full effect. Not that he was sorry to miss what was surely an unpleasant business of getting him rolled onto the stretcher, and from there to the TARDIS infirmary. He could have done without the weird, disorienting, strobe-flickers of consciousness, however.  
  
He knew when they made it back to the TARDIS and passed through the doors — he’d recognize the sound/scent of _home_ anywhere, even without the faint hint of the TARDIS’s questing thought-tendrils brushing at his mind. Lately, he’d been noticing her more and more that way; whether it was an effect of the link, or simply that he and the timeship were getting better acquainted, he had no idea. It didn’t seem particularly important, really. Just another part of his new life and new family.  
  
There were fragments of reaching the infirmary, and of having his clothes removed (so much for his second-favorite pair of leather trousers, he thought with distant, disconnected regret as the Doctor cut them off of him). Then a long blur of the Doctor and Rose working around and on him, Rose assisting the Doctor with grim, determined calm. Jack was aware of their voices and their mental presences, lulling him in the foggy grip of the drug. The TARDIS poked and sang in the background, inspecting the goings-on like some inquisitive alien parrot perched on the Doctor’s shoulder . . .  
  
That image was a little _too_ hallucinatory for Jack’s liking, even when he was thoroughly stoned, so he tried to marshal his thoughts. Gradually, reality became more coherently linear and he suspected the initial painkiller was wearing off. He wasn’t feeling any pain, though — he suspected a few shots of local anesthetic . . . also, he could hear the familiar irritating buzz of the hand-held tissue regenerator.  
  
Blinking, he realized he was lying on his side on the central examination table, looking across half the infirmary at the empty wall. All the action was taking place behind him.  
  
Still a little fuzzy, he sent a ( _?_ ) pulse down the link, not sure how well his voice would work yet.  
  
“Ah, there you are, back with us,” the Doctor said, with the mental equivalent of an affectionate pat on the shoulder; he sounded slightly distracted.  
  
Rose, a half-second later, responded with a less-distracted flare of her “happy colors” through the link, and a physical caress on his shoulder. “Just relax,” she told him. “The Doctor’s got you almost all patched up.”  
  
Jack started to croak out a response, cleared his throat, and tried again. “Don’t think I’ve got much choice about relaxing righ’ now. S’me strong stuff y’ gave me.”  
  
“Quick to act, quick to metabolize,’ the Doctor said, still sounding distracted. “Don’t go movin’ around, now you’re awake again. I’ve got your knee as braced as it’s gonna get for now, and I’m healin’ up the rest from the inside out, so if you want your backside to stay as pretty as your front side, you’ll keep quiet . . .”  
  
“Yessir,” Jack replied. The Doctor’s tone was mostly one of good-natured irritation, as if patching up Jack was a minor interruption in the day’s routine, but underneath there were undercurrents of concern he wasn’t hiding very effectively. “Wouldn’t want to have to explain any scars _there_. Embarrassin’. Look like I was runnin’ away.”  
  
“You were,” Rose said, and he could as good as hear the tip of her tongue between her teeth. Bless her, trying to lighten the mood.  
  
“Was not,” Jack said, with as much dignity as a man getting his rear end reconstructed could muster. “I was running _towards_ something, thanks. The bad guys just happened to be behind me.”  
  
Rose laughed, and it was genuine. Jack grinned in response, knowing she’d feel it even though he was still facing the wall. The knee injury was obviously worrying the Doctor, far more than the relatively straightforward job of stitching muscle meat back together. Knees could be tricky stuff, Jack knew, though it wouldn’t be a permanent injury. If necessary, the whole joint could be removed and a cloned one implanted — major surgery, with a slow recovery time.  
  
Once, the prospect would have had Jack scared; a long healing period of enforced helplessness (or at least restricted mobility) would have been nearly as damaging to his survival prospects as major cosmetic scarring. But now, he knew he’d be looked after. Just having Rose and the Doctor here with him, working to patch him up (and laugh while they did so), was incredibly . . . he fumbled around inside his brain for the right word. _Reassuring._ For once, someone was looking out for him besides himself. He was _safe._  
  
The breath went out of him in a long sigh and he relaxed into the padded surface of the table. He didn’t try to hide his relief, inside or out. Rose, moved, rubbed his shoulder again, the skin contact pleasant both in itself and for the steadying, relaxing effect it had on their empathic link. Jack reached up, somewhat awkwardly, and brushed his hand over hers, careful to keep his legs and lower torso completely immobile.  
  
The Doctor didn’t respond outwardly, still locked in fierce concentration, though he spared the mental equivalent of an indulgent glance in their direction. Another few moments and he huffed out a satisfied breath. The whining buzz of the regenerator switched off.  
  
“There!” he said. “Nearly as good as new, and as nice a job as I’ve ever seen, if I do say so myself.”  
  
Jack snorted, not even needing to voice the ( _and you usually do_ ) that popped into his head. He was rewarded with the lightest of slaps on the uninjured half of his backside.  
  
“Oi! None of that! Seen enough of your cheek to last me a long while — been starin’ at it for the last hour, in fact.”  
  
Jack heard rustling, as of fabric being bundled up, and Rose groaned.  
  
“Please let this _not_ start a run of arse puns,” she said in a long-suffering tone. Then, more normally, she added, “If you don’t need me for a moment, I’ll run this lot down to the laundry.”  
  
She ducked around the examination table and into Jack’s line of sight, her arms wrapped around a wadded bundle he recognized as being made up mostly of his former clothes, along with a few now-bloodied cleaning cloths. Rose ducked down and gave him a quick kiss on the lips, then turned on her heel and bounced out of the room. Jack, pleased by the kiss, nonetheless waved a sad mental farewell at his trousers.  
  
If nothing else, they’d been great for irritating the hell out of Mickey.  



	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack gets a little prescription medicine.

The Doctor rattled around, clearing instruments and equipment away. Jack might have been able to twist his neck around enough to look back over his shoulder and watch, but he preferred the comfort of lying as he was.  
  
“You’ll need to take things easy, while the new connective tissue toughens up,” the Doctor told him, conversationally, “as I’m sure you know. Can’t risk rippin’ those wounds open again. Then they _will_ scar up. Bed for a day or two, and nothin’ very adventurous for a few days more.”  
  
Jack made a show of sighing. “Confined to bed for two days, _resting_. What a depressing thought.”  
  
“It’s not like you’ll be alone,” the Doctor said, amused, and Jack knew it was true — contact and shared sleep accelerated healing for the three of them. The Doctor walked around the examination table and into Jack’s line of sight for the first time, continuing his tidying up. He looked like someone who was finally relaxing after a lot of stress. Stress caused, Jack knew, by worry over Jack’s injuries.  
  
It still felt strange to have someone _worried_ about him. Two someones.  
  
Jack remembered the last time he’d been badly injured, the face full of shrapnel he’d taken in that bomb explosion. That had been frightening for him — he still hadn’t gotten it though his (he now admitted) thick skull that he wasn’t alone any more. He’d finally gotten the message after spending a day in bed, with his two shipmates loyally pressed up against him — Rose (mostly) dozing along with Jack, and the Doctor (mostly) reading through a stack of books that somehow managed to get scattered all over the bed and poke sharp corners into everyone at inopportune moments  
  
Jack had healed in record time, without the tiniest trace of a scar, to his great relief. He considered his face to be one of his more useful assets. Better than his brain, more often than not . . .  
  
“Why does it always seem to be me getting injured?” he asked, somewhat rhetorically.  
  
Jack could sense the Doctor’s sarcastic comment forming even before it was spoken — an empathic sensation Rose called “the Oncoming Snark.” He decided on a preemptive strike. “Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m just talented that way.”  
  
“S’all that testosterone in your system. Goes straight to the brain,” the Doctor replied, with slightly superior good humor. He reached up absently to tug the pin from the knot of hair at the nape of his neck. Pocketing the pin, he finger-combed the loosened, shaggy mane back from his face and into a certain degree of order.  
  
Jack still wasn’t sure how the Hair Thing worked — it was one of the Doctor’s obscure Time Lord customs that he’d never felt the need to explain to his human companions. However, Jack had worked out some rough translations. The Doctor only wore his hair loose when he was a) relaxed, b) somewhere he considered “safe,” and c) when he wasn’t intending to work on anything intensively for the next while.  
  
Jack had also worked out that it was extremely sexy — the Doctor managed to carry off nearly waist-length hair in a way that wasn’t even remotely effeminate; even the habitual, tidying finger rake was brisk, strong, and entirely masculine. It definitely stirred a reaction in Jack — was doing so right now, in fact, he realized.  
  
Right when there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it without risking reopening his wounds. Just his luck.  
  
Still, he couldn’t resist responding to the Doctor’s comment with, “I dunno — I think it reaches some of the other organs, too.”  
  
The Doctor arched an eyebrow at him. “So I see.” His tone was dry . . . but also appreciative.  
  
That tone made Jack’s arousal ratchet up a notch. He was suddenly very aware that he was naked . . . and that the Doctor was giving him _that_ look with eyes gone considerably darker than a moment ago.  
  
Jack was unprepared for the sudden wash of raw desire that ran through him — through them both, reverberating across the link. It was far stronger and faster a response than he would have expected, especially with one of them injured, and the flavor of the emotion was unusual . . .  
  
Gritting his teeth and trying to keep his thoughts coherent while holding as still as possible in deference to his injuries, Jack realized the link was doing more than just channeling sensations, for once. It seemed to be _generating_ them.  
  
“That’s the link,” he said verbally, keeping his eyes locked on the Doctor’s face to help him stay focused. “What’s it doing?”  
  
“Healing response,” the Doctor told him, holding his distance with visible strain. “You took some deep muscle damage. Your system’s reaching out for help, and the link’s tryin’ to find a balance.”  
  
Given the physical and emotional nature of the link, sex would be a very direct route to balance, but Jack couldn’t remember anything like _this._ He swallowed and closed his eyes, trying to keep higher brain functions online. “Not very practical of it, since I can’t do much about it right now . . .” the urge to try was almost overwhelming, however. “ _Damn_ , that’s strong!” It felt like all of his blood was rising to the surface, for a full body flush. It would have been enjoyable if he’d had any chance of satisfying the desires he was feeling.  
  
A leathery rustle snapped his eyes back open; the Doctor was shucking out of his ever-present coat with exceptional speed. In response to Jack’s startled expression, he said, “I don’t think it’s as hopeless as all that, Captain. There are ways to deal with this sort of thing . . .”  
  
Still stripping, the Doctor walked quickly around the examination table; Jack could hear the familiar sounds of laces and zips being worked.  
  
Jack closed his eyes and shivered. His skin was turning into one giant, screaming ache, and the anticipation was killing him. A puff of air against his bare back, and then the Doctor’s weight hit the examination table. Within seconds he was spooned up against Jack, one arm slithering between Jack’s armpit and the surface of the table to wrap around his chest and pull him in tight. It was all very efficient — the Doctor’s knees fitted behind Jack’s and his pelvis bracing Jack’s backside provided he necessary support to keep Jack from moving and stressing his wounds. The arm around Jack’s chest was almost superfluous.  
  
The touch of cool, bare, familiar skin along the length of Jack’s body set the link to purring, as it always did . . . but he tensed and sucked in a short, involuntary breath as the sudden contact touched off deep-seated instincts.  
  
He might joke about handcuffs (and he was willing enough to apply such restraints to others who enjoyed them), but Jack had never cared to have his own movements restricted — he preferred being active. It was safer that way, easier for his ingrained wariness to accept. Sudden restraint touched off the urge to struggle — especially restraint applied from his blind side, when he was at a physical disadvantage.  
  
At the same time, his arousal reached nearly painful levels.  
  
_Safe_ , he reminded himself with a great deal of mental force, closing his thoughts and feelings off briefly while he struggled with his reactions. _Remember, you’re safe here, safe with_ him.  
  
With an effort, he relaxed against the Doctor’s body, and reopened his end of the link. It had only taken a second or two, but he didn’t doubt the Doctor had noticed.  
  
( _Peace_ ), came the Doctor’s soothing impulse, backed by a hint of the massive psychic force at his disposal, as his other hand reached around to deal with Jack’s arousal, his forearm bracing against Jack’s hipbone to provide even more support.  
  
Jack couldn’t have moved if he’d wanted to at this point — but he emphatically didn’t want to. The Doctor’s touch sent an explosion of pleasure through him ; Jack had never encountered such knowing, capable hands before. If he had a poetic bone in his body, he’d write sonnets about the Doctor’s hands.  
  
The link flared to full, vivid life, and Jack gulped in the non-physical contact if it were air for his lungs; but somehow, this time, it wasn’t _enough_. Deep down was a hunger for something more, something he couldn’t even put a name to. He sank back against the Doctor’s body, and opened the link as far as it would go, searching, reaching . . .  
  
The Doctor responded, twisting his arm against Jack’s chest so he could press his fingertips against the side of Jack’s face. The inside of Jack’s head unfolded “outwards,” into the borderline dream-state of deep telepathic contact.  
  
Inner space filled with the vast, swirling storm that represented the Doctor’s mind in this sort of communication, Sensory/symbolic personal imagery was a feature of some highly telepathic species. _Manifestation_ was the technical name for it, and Jack had been in enough mind-to-mind contact with the Doctor to know that the Time Lord manifested as the Storm that had inspired his famous title.  
  
Jack had never experienced the manifestation with such utter clarity before, though; cold wind and the scent of rain washed over and through him, separate from — but blended with — the simpler, more basic contact of bodies and emotions. Jack groaned, savoring pleasure shared on three different levels, each one exquisite in and of itself.  
  
As the storm roared though Jack, exhilarating instead of frightening, it stirred the depths of his mind as the wind raises waves on the sea — wild whitecaps, flaring in time to the Doctor’s steady, practiced touch back in the physical realm.  
  
_This shouldn’t be happening,_ The thought was almost lost in the maelstrom of sensations Jack was experiencing. _Humans don’t share manifestations . . ._  
  
_They don’t share links, either,_ pointed out a very large, amused voice that came from everywhere and nowhere.  
  
True enough; and it wasn’t like this was something you could _argue_ with. Jack dropped any attempt to stay rational and rode the irresistible power of a storm surge gathering speed as it rolled in towards the shore.  



	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quite possibly the most irritating thing I've worked on in a long time -- many thanks to aibhinn for beta-ing and encouragement.

Rose jogged in the direction of the TARDIS laundry facilities, grateful for a moment to escape and be alone with her thoughts. She’d kept her composure while they’d been patching up Jack because she’d needed to, but with the emergency over, she was shaky from reaction . . . and the last thing either Jack or the Doctor needed at the moment was any sort of emotional wibbling from her.  
  
Reaching the laundry (which was really very nice -- she did Laundry Day at her mum’s as an excuse to visit, not out of necessity), she bundled most of Jack’s clothing into one of the “washers.” No need to soak the blood out first; the sonic-powered equipment could handle it straight. Every now and then, Time Lord technology showed an admirably practical bent.  
  
Biting her lip, Rose held up the remnants of Jack’s leather trousers. Absolutely hopeless, and him so fond of them . . . She flashed back on how those slashes had gotten there, remembered that it was Jack’s blood smeared across the leather, and she started shaking again. Forcing herself under control, she folded the trousers as neatly as she could and set them on the small table she used for sorting clean clothes. She couldn’t quite bring herself to chuck them into the rubbish chute.  
  
_It’s all right,_ she thought firmly, leaning on the edge of the table, her head bowed. _He’s okay._ Everyone _is okay . . ._ Well except for those two soldiers, probably. She winced, remembering the noise made by steel pipe contacting sentient skull. Still . . . little as she liked violence, she couldn’t feel bad about what they’d done. Jack’s life had been in the balance, and it wasn’t like they would have been able to reason with a couple of homicidal fanatics.  
  
That brought her to what really disturbed her about that moment — or rather, the moment just before it.  
  
She and the Doctor had been running with locked systems, not as fast as they might, since they were supporting Jack’s mad sprint up ahead, but moving quickly and efficiently all the same. Out of his peripheral vision, the Doctor had spotted a pile of short pipe lengths, probably there for repairs or maintenance, and he’d bent to scoop up a handful with easy grace as they’d passed by. He knew Rose had a good throwing arm, so he’d tossed them to her one by one and she’d caught them, neither breaking stride, smooth as juggling or dancing or sex.  
  
They’d felt Jack’s triumph, and then the shock as he was struck down. She and the Doctor had reacted with instant, shared rage . . . and she’d felt something _change_ in the Doctor’s mind, discrete as a flipped switch. By their actions, the Sssen’an had placed themselves in the category of _Not My Responsibility_ , outside his sphere of concern or compassion. It was an inhuman thought process, old and cold under the anger: the mindset of someone who believed in the core of his being that he had a right — a duty, even — to make such judgments.  
  
Not that Rose hadn’t reached pretty much the same conclusion in her hot, quick, immediate, human way ( _mate threatened/attack/defend/no mercy!_ ), but for just a moment she’d held the Doctor’s concepts in her mind as well, and understood them from the inside out. That bothered her. It was natural for the Doctor’s brain to be alien, since he _was_ an alien. But she didn’t like the idea that the inside of her own head might be going a little strange, too.  
  
With a huff of irritation to cover her unease, she pushed off from the table. She wasn’t doing any good moping around down here. Better get back and see if she could do anything more to help. She’d had her time alone.  
  
She smiled as she made her way up one of the TARDIS’s helical staircases, remembering Jack’s easy trust as they worked to heal him this time. No more fears over scarring, or the others’ possible reactions to it. He’d known he was loved, before, for more than his surface prettiness — but sometimes he’d seemed to have trouble _believing_ it. She was glad he’d finally started.  
  
Rose found she could hardly wait to get back to the infirmary, taking the steps two at a time. She wanted to kiss Jack again, to run her hand along his skin, to . . .  
  
_What?_ She ground to a halt at the top of the staircase, swaying a little, shocked by the sudden, graphic turn her thoughts had taken.  
  
Oh, she wanted to touch Jack, all right — with her hands and lips and tongue until the link sang with desire, and then . . .  
  
Rose wrenched her thoughts away from what would normally be a pleasant image — because things weren’t normal. Jack had been _injured_. How the hell could she be selfish enough to want that sort of gratification with him right now? They could use sex to speed healing and she’d expected they would this time, too -- after a decent wait. Jack’s blood was hardly dry . . . she had a sudden flashback to red-black spatters on concrete and metal.  
  
_Not_ a good idea thinking about blood. It made her queasy, so she closed her eyes and took a few steadying breaths. She needed to get herself under control. She was feeling scraped raw — too much stress in the last few hours. Almost getting blown into dissociated atoms was always unsettling, and she’d seen a lot more blood and violence (some of it by her own hand) than she liked to consider. The TARDIS hummed at her with a hint of concern, and Rose could feel the faint coil and twist of thin, golden tendrils at the bottom of her mind.  
  
“S’okay, girl,” Rose murmured, reaching out to pat the corridor wall as she began walking again. The ship purred and growled a little, and Rose couldn’t help smiling. She understood now why the Doctor was prone to stroke bits of the TARDIS at random times. It was soothing and exhilarating, like petting a friendly tiger.  
  
As she walked Rose carefully ran through the psionic centering and shielding exercises Jack had taught her. _Mind reflects body, body reflects mind . . ._ By the time she reached the infirmary, her shields were a perfect, solid sphere around her thoughts, the link stopped down to the thinnest spider-silk connection. Inside her shielded bubble, she was perfectly steady. Feeling more than a little smug, she stepped through the infirmary doorway — and stopped.  
  
For a moment, she couldn’t process what she was seeing. Oh, it was obvious enough; with Jack lying more or less facing her, she had a full view of what the Doctor was doing. It wasn’t the sex as such — they were very free about such things between the three of them, and she’d walked in on the others before — it was the context. It was so very, very close to her guilty thoughts a few minutes earlier, the sight made her ache with reawakened need. And it was all taking place right there on the table where they’d just finished fixing Jack’s injuries.  
  
Rose swallowed, trying to recapture her equilibrium from just moments before, unable to look away. The two of them together were amazing to watch, so beautiful: Jack wrapped tightly in the Doctor’s protective arms, their taut muscles standing out clearly under the skin, intense concentration on their faces. Reflexively she reached out with the link, seeking contact, drawn like iron to a magnet or a moth to flame.  
  
They were locked together body and mind, unaware of her presence, and underneath it all ran something for which _lust_ and _desire_ were words too thin and weak to apply. It was something beyond even the link, deeper than the mere sharing of emotions and sensations. Whatever it was, the power of it was frightening, elemental and not even remotely human.  
  
Watching as her crewmates played out their dance, Rose gripped the doorframe until the tendons in her wrist knotted and cramped, perfectly balanced between her desperation to go to them and the urge to run.  



	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took forever, I know -- partly because of a bit of writer's block,partly from a long round of the flu sapping my creative energies . . . but it's up. One more chapter to go, yay! :D

Gasping for air, Jack slammed back into his body, propelled simultaneously by the sensation of being a wave shattered to spray on the shore and the force of a truly memorable orgasm.  
  
_Wow,_ was his first coherent thought as he opened his eyes and relaxed back against the Doctor’s support. _I hope I still have all my vertebrae — felt like I damn near shot one out the front . . ._  
  
Then he saw Rose standing in the doorway to the infirmary, her hands clenched on the doorframe. Her eyes were huge, and she wore the most appalled expression Jack had ever seen on her face.  
  
“Godammit!” Jack’s mood shifted to instant irritation. His wounds — he couldn’t feel anything past the local anesthetic the Doc had given him. He must have moved without realizing it and pulled everything open again; he was probably bleeding all over the place. It was the only reason he could think of for Rose to look like that; it couldn’t be the hand job. She’d walked in on more than that before and just laughed, or joined in. Or both.  
  
Still a little disoriented, Jack rolled his head around and sighted down his own flank as best he could, past the Doctor’s arm draped across his waist — but all he saw was pale, unbroken skin. No blood, no ripped flesh. _So what the hell . . .?_ His vision was oddly blurred and doubled. Belatedly, he realized the Doctor’s fingertips were still in place over the neural junctures along side of his face; the Doctor had moved with him as he shifted his head, to maintain contact.  
  
As if reading Jack’s mind, Rose grated out, angrily, “What the hell was that?”  
  
_Is this a trick question?_ was the first thought that popped into Jack’s head. Before he could say anything (and probably luckily for him), Rose continued, “The link’s never felt like that before. What’s it _doing_?” Her voice cracked on the last word, and Jack realized that Rose’s apparent anger covered something close to fear.  
  
The link expanded outward, breaking the tight configuration between Jack and the Doctor, so that he — they — could abruptly feel Rose’s emotions as a disconcerted wash of jarring colors. The two men sucked in a simultaneous breath, a short, sharp inhalation like the response to a stubbed toe.  
  
“It’s healing Jack,” the Doctor told her, his voice rumbling through Jack’s body and echoing in his head with a hint of thunder.  
  
“So that’s how it is?” Rose asked, responding to the growl in the Doctor’s voice with drawn-down brows, and a thrum of bright defiance through the link. “One of us gets hurt, and that’s a _turn-on_? We only just stitched him up, and now we’re gonna shag him? That’s sick, that is!”  
  
A vivid wash of her mixed emotions lashed out — too many conflicting impulses to pick apart and name easily, but there was discomfort, guilt, worry, and a breath of fear, mixed with and overlain by a veneer with defensive outrage. The “volume” of her emotions was so bright it nearly burned the color out of them, leaving only blinding vehemence. Jack gritted his teeth, surprised.  
  
_Too intense . . ._ The thought could have been Jack’s, or the Doctor’s, or both. Moving with split-second decisiveness, the Doctor released his hold on Jack and rolled off the examination table, landing neatly on his feet, facing Rose. The residual telepathic connection snapped closed. With the skin contact between two of them broken, the intensity of psionic undercurrents in the room damped down appreciably.  
  
“It’s not _sick_ ,” the Doctor said, his voice rising in pitch defensively. “S’ perfectly natural . . .”  
  
“Natural for you, maybe,” Rose shot back, her voice shaking. “Not for me!” Her emotional tone went defiantly crimson a split second before she dug in her mental heels, braced herself, and _pulled_.  
  
Jack’s breath went out of him all at once with shock, and he could hear the Doctor’s startled gasp. They’d had their arguments before — some real doozies, even — but this was he first time one of them had actively fought the link since its acceptance. It hurt, in an indescribable way that had nothing to do with physical nerve endings.  
  
Rose’s eyes widened with shock at the results of her action. She eased back mentally, letting the link relax into its usual configuration, and all of them slumped with relief. There was a moment’s silence while everyone caught their breaths, the three of them marking the points of an uneasy triangle.  
  
\--  
  
Rose inhaled deeply, trying to find some sort of balance and failing. The spider-silk of the link was stretched tight between them, lighter than gauze and appallingly strong. It was one thing to know intellectually that the bond was unbreakable, another thing entirely to realize exactly how powerful a force it was.  
  
Until this moment she would have found her equilibrium within that link, seeing it as a safe, friendly, familiar thing; settled and tame — domestic, even. But it wasn’t any of those things now, and for Rose it was like having solid ground shift beneath her feet. Disconcerted, she saw her life from a dizzying, distant perspective.  
  
She was clinging to a doorframe, facing two gorgeous naked men — one of them not even remotely human — in the heart of a living time machine that was hovering God-Knows-Where, an incalculable distance from the homey flat where she’d grown up . . .  
  
With a jolt, Rose realized she no longer knew how old she was. How many years had she traveled with the Doctor, with the Doctor and Jack? She didn’t even know that simple thing about herself anymore, adrift in Time and Space.  
  
Rose swallowed. “Right, then. Is that it? Just do what the link tells me to, huh?” Her voice was still shaky, but at least she sounded pissed off and not scared. Pissed off meant you weren’t going down without a fight.  
  
The Doctor huffed out an irritated breath and raked one hand through his loose hair, his other hand planted on his hip. His stance was braced, weight forward, the borderline-aggressive pose he took in an argument. He was completely, unselfconsciously naked and it was clear enough that he’d enjoyed pleasuring Jack — though that was fading as the tension in the room increased. The strange/familiar storm-blue eyes fixed hers, and his expression was one that looked superficially like anger. Rose recognized it as frustration with someone being extraordinarily dim.  
  
Naked, fierce and aroused, the Doctor could have been some incredible wet-dream fantasy. Rose wanted him so much she could practically scream — but damned if she was giving in that easily.  
  
\--  
  
Jack, momentarily off the others’ radar, groaned inwardly as he felt Rose and the Doctor shifting into battle mode. This was shaping up to be a bad one. They had to be the two most passionate and stubborn individuals he’d ever met — which didn’t always make for a good combination.  
  
“The link isn’t something _separate_ , Rose,” the Doctor said, and Jack groaned again at the superior tone of voice. “It’s us -- the three of us together.” ( _Nothing to be afraid of,_ ) were the undercurrents, ( _don’t be silly . . ._ )  
  
Not the tone to be taking with Rose right now. If there was one thing guaranteed to get her back up, it was being talked down to — followed closely by the sense that she was being railroaded into something against her will. And if there was one thing that got the _Doctor_ riled up, it was the feeling that someone was questioning his expertise and authority.  
  
With unpredictable empathic and telepathic influences filling the room — just to make it all that much more entertaining — things were poised to go downhill in a _big_ way.  
  
“Yeah? Well how come it feels . . . like _that_?” Rose asked, still resisting. No need to ask what she meant. The infirmary still held echoes of a violent storm at sea, invisible to the body’s senses but looming hugely in the psionic realm. It would have made for fabulous afterglow, if Jack had been able to lie back and enjoy it.  
  
Unfortunately, he was stuck curled on his side, facing Rose, and unable to look back at the Doctor without a cricked neck. Exactly how long _did_ he have to stay in that position? How stable were his healed wounds? The Doctor had never actually got ‘round to saying . . .  
  
Meanwhile, the two people with whom he wanted to share that glorious sensation were butting heads in their inimitable fashion.  
  
“You said you wanted the link, said you accepted it,” the Doctor rumbled, but underneath the growl, Jack heard hurt and a sense of rejection, which was at least part of what really drove his confrontational attitude. Choosing to love, to accept, had been a huge hurdle for the Doctor . . . and Rose had been the one that had gotten him over it. For her to renege now (or even just appear to) would break his hearts.  
  
“I thought I knew what it was,” Rose shot back. “Now . . . I’ve got no idea.”  
  
And there was the core of it, for her. Jack recognized the sensation he was “hearing” from her, deep down, where she herself was probably unaware of it.  
  
She hadn’t had any idea. She’d just known that she loved Jack and the Doctor, and she’d been willing to jump off the cliff of empathic commitment based entirely on her love and faith alone. She had no cultural frame of reference for any of this — not just the link, but traveling in time (and space), sharing her life with not one, but two others, encountering new and alien things every day . . . Hell, look at that _Star Wars_ movie Rose had shown him. Jack thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen, and had nearly laughed himself into a nosebleed watching it . . . but _that_ represented Rose’s cultural perceptions of the greater Universe.  
  
Rose was a champion at taking things in stride, accepting them on their own terms by a sheer act of will — but even so, strangeness piled on strangeness took its toll. Eventually the human mind had a tendency to short out, to shut down and refuse to accept anything more that was new and strange. It happened to the best.  
  
It had even happened to a cocky ‘Shaney kid who thought he knew everything, since he’d grown up in the only spaceport on the Peninsula and experienced a tiny fraction of what one galaxy had to offer. He’d found out how wrong he was when he finally reached the stars he’d wanted all his life.  
  
That had been long ago, for Jack — but he could remember the feeling clearly. He wondered if the Doctor had ever experienced anything similar, being nonhuman. If so, it would have been centuries ago. Easy to forget after that long . . . and Rose was so amazing, so exceptional, it was hard to remember how young she really was.  
  
“Fine time for cold feet,” the Doctor snapped. “We’re _bound_ , Rose.”  
  
_Oh, great, issue ultimatums . . ._ Jack thought . . . a fraction of a second before concerned golden threads of alien awareness began coiling up through his mind like curious strands of ivy, reaching, searching — the TARDIS, sensing the discomfort of her crew, and reacting. God, _everyone_ was turning out for this go-round.  
  
Rose’s eyes widened, and Jack knew with absolute certainty that, as much as Rose loved the TARDIS, and as close as she’d been to the ship since the Game Station and the Bad Wolf, one more reminder of alien-ness was the last possible thing she needed right then.  
  
Damn.  
  
When he stopped to think about it at all, it was Jack’s wry conviction that his individual function in the link — the unique quality that had made him the catalyst for their unlikely connection — was his ability to understand what both Rose and the Doctor were saying, even when they had no clue about it themselves.  
  
Time for Captain Jack’s Translation Service to kick into gear before things went any further.  
  
“ _’Scuse_ me,” he said loudly, at the same time waving his hand in the air for attention. Startled, Rose and the Doctor both looked at him as if they’d forgotten he was even in the room. They very likely had. “If this is gonna take a while, can I get a towel or something?”  
  
As he’d hoped, the blunt shift to biological realities derailed the tension in the room slightly. Behind him, he could hear the Doctor shifting position, and then a cloth was pressed into his hand (still held expectantly in the air).  
  
“Thanks,” Jack said, and began cleaning up without the slightest embarrassment, making every move completely matter-of-fact. “Seeing as how I’m the injured party, can I say a few things?”  
  
He took the others’ (slightly guilty) silence as confirmation, and continued.  
  
“First off, if I’m gonna need major fixing up, then I like this method way more than getting dunked in a regen tank full of blue gunk . . . ‘  
  
“Catalytic substrate gel,” the Doctor supplied. Jack knew very well what the blue gunk was properly called, but the last thing Rose needed now was a lot of distancing technobabble. She needed to feel that things were simple, understandable, and accessible. He’d chosen his terminology deliberately.  
  
“Whatever,” Jack said, keeping his tone light. “It always makes me itch like crazy.” He finished with the cloth, wadded it up, and pitched it casually towards the nearest hamper. Possibly because he hadn’t been trying very hard he scored a beautiful direct hit. “Sex, and the link, is a lot nicer.”  
  
He looked up, and caught Rose’s eyes, grateful that she was the one in his line of sight. She’d already relaxed visibly, one hand just resting lightly on the doorframe, rather than grasping it tightly. “And it’s not ‘sick’ to use what we’ve got to help out when one of us needs it. The link’s about the healing, not the being hurt.”  
  
She was still feeling and looking far from easy, but Jack’s relaxed attitude was reaching her. The Doctor was cooling down a little, too, as a side benefit.  
  
Rose swallowed, and Jack could sense the point about healing sinking in this time, now that she wasn't as upset and distracted. That was their Rose all over — if there was some way she could help someone else, she’d tend to be all for it.  
  
“That was just so . . . different,” she said. “Like a compulsion. Is that what it feels like when the link needs to make a lot of energy?” She sounded hesitant, but no longer upset. Just so long as she could keep from feeling overwhelmed again, she’d get through this fine. Down beneath her surface agitation, Jack could feel the bedrock of her trust and love. She just needed to find her footing again.  
  
By spinal reflex, the Doctor couldn’t resist correcting, in a classically superior tone of voice, “You can’t _make_ energy, the link just redirects . . .” Rose shifted to glare at him, stiffening slightly with irritation. Jack did his best to send a tightly-aimed somatic memory of a kick in the shin to the Time Lord. “ . . . it,” the Doctor finished, a little lamely, sounding surprised.  
  
“Well, I’m not complaining,” Jack said, giving Rose a sly grin, and letting the last of his mental and physical afterglow pour down the link.  
  
Rose inhaled sharply, and even from across the room Jack couldn’t miss the slight flush that washed across her cheeks, or the way her eyes darkened. He wouldn’t even have needed the link to know how strongly she was responding — it was perfectly clear to ordinary vision alone.  
  
A half second, later, though, he saw her hand’s grip tighten on the doorframe again. “God, that’s strong,” she gasped, unwittingly echoing Jack’s earlier words. “And I . . .” she trailed off, radiating desire and unease.  
  
Damn, that had been a misstep. He shouldn’t have brought the full force of the link into play so soon. Jack opened his mouth to say something reassuring — he wasn’t quite sure what — only to have the Doctor beat him to it.  
  
“And?” he asked, gently, stepping into Jack’s line of sight. His movements were careful and conciliatory, and Jack blew out a breath of relief. At least _one_ of them had calmed down, which was a good sign. When they weren’t in a mutually argumentative mood, Rose and the Doctor were two of the most simpatico people Jack had ever seen. As long as only one of them was in a bad mood, the other was pretty well guaranteed to get through, given time.  
  
Rose swallowed again and focused on the Doctor. In a small voice, she said, “I want you, both of you, but not . . . like usual. I want more, but I don’t know what, and it’s big. Weird.” Her face was worried, but she was relaxing even as she spoke. The Doctor moved closer, and Rose didn’t tense or pull back.  
  
Jack bit his lip, reduced to a spectator again, but happy to hold his peace. A coil of curious gold shifted in the back of his head, and he realized the TARDIS was still listening in, too. ( _Shh!_ ) he thought at her, as best he could. He never really knew what the ship understood and what she didn’t, but she seemed to like being “talked” to. At any rate, the questing tendril stilled.  
  
The Doctor was in arm’s reach of Rose now, and she was leaning towards him, ever so slightly. “I want to touch you,” she said, holding up her hand as if to lay it flat on his bare chest, stopping a few inches away, “but when I picture it, it’s like I’m a ghost. My hand keeps going, right through you, into you. It’s . . . creepy,” she said. She let her hand drop, but her eyes were wide and hopeful, fixed on the Doctor’s face, looking for reassurance.  
  
“That’s normal,” the Doctor told her, his voice warm and steady, and Jack could have cheered. “S’ your mind wanting contact, same as your body and emotions. You’re thinking symbolically.”  
  
Rose frowned slightly, and her hand slipped completely free of the doorframe as she took a half-step towards the Doctor. “Symbolically — that would make it telepathy then, not empathy. Kinda’ like what we did that first night . . .”  
  
“Exactly like that,” the Doctor said, beaming at her. “Only . . . not so . . . er,” Uncharacteristically, he fumbled, at a loss for the right word.  
  
Rose, understanding his hesitation, actually laughed. “Confrontational?” she asked, amused, reaching up to brush her hand along the Doctor’s cheek. The contact sent a pleasant zing through the link. Jack sighed and relaxed into the surface of the examination table. The room was full of subliminal, shimmering tensions again, but they were all the _right_ kind.  
  
The Doctor’s hand slipped up to cup Rose’s cheek, mirroring her gesture before his fingertips slipped precisely into position over the neural junctions while the link sang in response to the skin contact. “Nothing confrontational about it, this,” he assured her. He could have joined their minds at that point, but he held back, cautious and respectful. “Deep, though,” he added, warningly.  
  
Deliberately, Rose raised herself up on tiptoe, slipping her hand around to pull the Doctor’s head down towards her, initiating the unnecessary (but enjoyable) final contact point she’d teased him about their first morning “after.”  
  
Even from halfway across the room, Jack could feel the shockwave that radiated from the established connection.  



	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Next to the last chapter! I decided to split the last section for length/narrative flow. Thanks for your patience, Gentle Readers, and the last bit will be up shortly. :D

From previous experience, Rose anticipated entering a different realm of perception, her physical senses fading away in the face of more compelling mental stimulus. And the Doctor’s mind was familiar enough that she expected to be wrapped in apparently limitless storm clouds representing his thoughts and personality.  
  
What she hadn’t expected was how _real_ it was going to feel this time.  
  
Disconcerted, she floated in a sphere of relatively still air surrounded by a slow, continuous spiral of mist and rain; she could smell the cold freshness of it, feel curtains of fine water vapor sweeping across her face. It was dark, but naturally so; distant flickers of lightning picked out the complex internal structures of the cloud surrounding her, and there were bright and dark striations in the mist.  
  
It wasn’t like the last time Rose had experienced the inside of the Doctor’s head with anything like this intensity. Then, he’d been trying to scare her, in a last desperate bid to keep the link from fully forming between the three of them. He hadn’t scared her then, though, and she wasn’t scared now so much as disoriented.  
  
( _All right?_ ) the storm asked her, the words coming from everywhere at once. Behind the words, underneath them, were the emotions that formed the link, adding texture and affection to the communication.  
  
( _Yes . . ._ ) she answered, hesitantly, still absorbing the sensations. It reminded her very much of being in zero-gee, a condition she was beginning to find familiar, given some of their recent travels.  
  
( _Then shall we dance?_ ) The words carried the unmistakable hint of one of the Doctor’s wide, geeky-happy grins. Ever so softly the wind wrapped around and gave Rose a light twirl.  
  
He was treating her very gently indeed this time, and Rose appreciated that while she was getting her bearings. That first time she’d been able to move herself within the storm’s grasp, she remembered, and tried adding a little more spin. It worked, and she grinned back at the surrounding darkness. _Yeah, I know how this works,_ she thought, and remembered something else from the last time.  
  
Light. That was what was needed. _I can do light._  
  
Without knowing how, she reached inside herself, expecting a brief flare of illumination to reach the surrounding clouds. Instead, she opened the doors to a nova.  
  
Pure, golden-white light exploded outwards, turning dark clouds to pure silver for a moment. Startled, Rose pulled back, half-blinded by what she’d called up.  
  
( _No!_ ) the Doctor told her, a roll of impatient thunder emphasizing the thought. ( _Shine, Rose. It’s what you are . . ._ )  
  
It didn’t take any more encouragement than that, because the light felt . . . good. It felt right. Bolder, Rose let it flare again, burning painlessly through her like sunlight through glass. She laughed, dizzy with the sensation. Exerting her newfound gift was wonderful — it felt like a long, delicious stretch after hours spent in a cramped position.  
  
( _I love it! Where’s it coming from?_ ) she called out to the surrounding clouds.  
  
The Doctor laughed, and spun her in a faster, wider arc. ( _From you, ‘course! Oh, Rose, like you could be anything_ else _!_ )  
  
Then Rose became aware of lips brushing hers, and the internal world faded, replaced by the physical. The kiss ended, and Rose dropped back off of tiptoes onto her heels so that she was looking up into the Doctor’s face. His expression was so soft, so gentle, she felt her ears go red. It wasn’t an expression he wore often, and it melted her every time she saw it.  
  
“ _My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun . . ._ ” he quoted, barely above a whisper . . . and then snorted, his expression going more familiarly sardonic. “Fat lot Shakespeare knew. But then, he never met you, did he?”  
  
Rose opened her mouth, not sure which of the dozen jostling questions would make it out first — but she was interrupted by a sudden, emphatic _whumpfh!_ accompanied by a puff of displaced air and a startled yelp from Jack.  
  
They spun around to face the examination table and nearly lost their collective balance, since they were still embracing. Only, it wasn’t an examination table any more. Jack, wide-eyed, now lay in the middle of a large, comfortably appointed bed; not as large as the one in their shared bedroom, but perfectly adequate for three.  
  
Jack, who had managed to remain lying on his side, had the fingers of both hands dug convulsively into the mattress for balance, all of his muscles tense, as if he half expected to be bucked off onto the floor at any moment. The three of them exchanged shocked looks for a moment.  
  
“That,” Jack began, in a voice that came very close to a squeak, and stopped. He cleared his throat. “That,” he continued, in something approaching his normal voice, “was the weirdest thing I have _ever_ felt.”  
  
The Doctor closed his mouth with a click, and Rose sputtered before breaking out into a fit of giggles.  
  
“Subtlety,” she gasped, “thy name is _not_ ‘TARDIS’!” Her arm slipped down to the Doctor’s waist, and she gave him a heartfelt, dizzy half-hug. A second later, he returned the squeeze, and laughed with her.  
  
“Never thought I’d see the day when our Captain looked that surprised in bed,” he observed, grinning ear-to-ear.  
  
“Hey! If you’d just had the furniture you’re lying on break apart into its component molecules and turn into something else, I bet you wouldn’t look any happier!” Jack shot back, rapidly regaining his composure. Then he grinned. “But now we’ve got the setting for it, what say you bring some of that over here? I think it’s time I got another dose of my medication . . .” If there could have been any doubt as to what he meant, he added a broad wink.  
  
“Mmmmmm. I dunno. What does your Doctor say about that?” Rose replied with a coy smile, glancing up at the Doctor.  
  
The Doctor raised his wrist and frowned at an invisible watch for a moment. Then he dropped his hand and grinned again. “Yep! Right on time. Amazing, that.”  
  
\--  
  
Rose dropped down to the bed in front of Jack, and started to tug her shirt over her head — as the only clothed person in the room, she was feeling decidedly overdressed. To her surprise, the Doctor laid a hand on her arm, stopping her.  
  
“I don’t think we’ll want that, yet. Best to take this a little more slowly — get used to what’s new.”  
  
Rose bit her lip and realized that the Doctor was trying to spare her any more large shocks. Probably not a bad idea, given her earlier bad reaction. A little embarrassed, she dropped her arms and settled down fully-clothed next to Jack when the Doctor gave her a gentle directing push.  
  
Jack grinned at her, seductive and reassuring at once, and she gave him a playful kiss on the tip of the nose before they began the process of shifting around into a workable position. They ended up with the Doctor spooned back against Jack, one hand slipped between the pillow and Jack’s face to reach the necessary contacts, the other hand reaching across to Rose. The Doctor ran a light, affectionate knuckle along her cheekbone before spreading his hand to touch the contact points.  
  
A moment’s pause, then a nonverbal ( _Ready?_ ) through the link. Rose swallowed, returning agreement. . . and the inside of her head exploded, painlessly.  
  
Her body vanished, and then re-formed as she was swept up by a powerful updraft that threw her skywards into swirls of midnight-dark storm clouds, shot through with rain and lightning. She laughed and spread her arms to encompass the maelstrom, fearless now in her love and trust. It was the Doctor — her Doctor, no matter how strange the form.  
  
The storm growled in appreciation and tossed her higher. She tucked into a tight ball to cut the resistance of the winds below her, and began to fall, slowly. The abyss opened beneath her, but she met its darkness effortlessly with light. She fell in a blazing cannonball, rolling head over heels through what seemed like limitless space. Then the clouds parted, and below her she saw the sea, reflecting her own light back to her from its rippled surface.  
  
Though she’d never seen it in that context before, she recognized the dark water below her instantly. Just before impact, she unrolled herself like diver but she needn’t have worried — she slipped through the water’s surface without resistance.  
  
Down she sank, turning the watery darkness into gorgeous shades of blue and green and turquoise — hidden beauty that only needed the light to bring it forth. Deep currents, dark and secret, swirled around her, and she felt the water gathering its strength, bunching beneath her. A heartbeat later, a solid column of living ocean formed beneath her, and shoved her back towards the distant silver mirror of the surface.  
  
She rode the column with anticipation, and when she broke the surface, the water didn’t stop supporting her, but twirled around her, supported by the ferocious storm wind that caught her up. Joyous, she gave back all her love as light, reaching to the horizons of her awareness, turning storm clouds to gold and the sea to silver, striking concentric rainbow rings from the blended air and water wherever she touched.  
  
It was a moment of beauty and perfection, outside of normal considerations of time and space — all motion balanced, everything true and clear, without fear; there was only joy and a huge, upwelling exaltation. Three forces sharing themselves to their limits, without fear or hesitation, in a single perfect chord.  
  
Because perfection cannot last, the moment shifted and changed, and she was back in her body, with the Doctor’s fingertips pressed to her face and Jack’s hand resting comfortably on the curve of her waist. Jack’s face was just inches from hers; blue eyes the color of a fair-weather sea crinkled at the corners as their owner grinned.  
  
Jack murmured a quiet, heartfelt, “Wow.”  
  
Rose couldn’t help smiling at his dazed, completely satisfied tone. “Yeah,” she agreed.  
  
“There are little golden threads in your eyes,” Jack added, as if it was an important revelation.  
  
“You’ve got silver in yours,” Rose told him, just as earnestly . . . and then, for reasons she couldn’t even begin to name, she started to laugh. So did Jack.  
  
The Doctor didn’t comment, but he let his arm slide down and wrap around both their waists, pulling them in close.  



	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yes, two chapters up in a night! Figured there was no point in drawing it out, especially since it's taken so long to finish.

Rose sighed. “Y’know, we can’t keep doing this,” she said reflectively.  
  
Following completion of their first successful mental union, Rose had taken a moment to strip off her clothing (finally), and the three of them had rearranged into one of their typically complex resting configurations. The Doctor was still spooned up against Jack with one arm draped across Jack’s waist, providing mechanical support as well as maximum skin contact. Rose lay on her back, her side pressed tightly to Jack’s front, her near arm thrown up behind her head. Her knees were hooked over Jack and the Doctor’s thighs, carefully arranged to avoid putting any torque on Jack’s injuries. Jack’s hand was resting on Rose’s belly, covered by the Doctor’s hand, Rose’s hand topping the pile. As intertwined as they were, it was still remarkably comfortable.  
  
( _?_ ) was the Doctor’s lazy nonverbal response.  
  
( _Why not?/seems fine_ ) Jack sent, simultaneously, an equivalent to a sleepy arched eyebrow.  
  
“Not _this_ ,” Rose clarified, waving her free hand vaguely in the air above her head to indicate the current state of affairs. “I mean, getting blindsided by some weird new development from the link. Seems like we get all worked up somehow an’ then it blows up in our faces.” She gave an illustrative flip of her wrist, fingers extended. “Be nice to not have a screaming argument each time. And yeah, I know, it was mostly my fault this time, but I was all stressed out and scared, and things got too crazy too fast. If I’d known this could happen, I would’ve done better.”  
  
“Oof.” The Doctor heaved himself up onto his elbow so he could look at her over Jack’s shoulder. “That’s part of the problem, though, isn’t it? There’s never been a link like this. No telling what it’ll do. S’all surprises.”  
  
“Yeah,” Rose shot back, “but you didn’t act too surprised today. Seemed like you were half expecting it, all this extra telepathy stuff, and the trippy hallucinations . . .”  
  
“Manifestations,” Jack corrected, eyes still closed.  
  
“See? Jack expected it, too.”  
  
“No, I didn’t,” Jack said. “Sure never thought I’d be seeing something like that from the inside.”  
  
“But you knew what it was, right? What is it, anyway?”  
  
Jack and the Doctor both started to answer at the same time and stopped. ( _Go on,_ ) Jack indicated, going lazy again.  
  
“A manifestation is the symbolic representations of a sentient personality, projected on telepathic wavelengths and perceived by other receptive minds within broadcast range,” the Doctor rattled off, as if he was reading a definition from a page in front of him.  
  
“S’ not something humans are supposed to have,” Jack added. “Takes a lot of psychic oompfh to produce one at all. Only species that spend a lot of time in telepathic contact with each other develop that sort of thing.” He paused, and added with a slight shrug of his shoulder, “And then there’s us. Maybe s’ cuz we spend so much time in a tight linkage, anymore. Could be bleed-over.”  
  
Rose thought for a moment. “So . . . a manifestation’s like an online avatar?” she asked slowly. Then she brightened. “And that inside-the-head stuff is like some kind of virtual reality? Telepathy is the Internet?” She laughed at the parallel.  
  
“Oi!” the Doctor cut in, irritated. “That’s an incredibly simplistic analogy . . .”.  
  
“Good enough for primitive ape minds, anyway,” Rose responded, sweetly, and saw Jack bite his lip, suppressing a grin, even though his eyes were still closed.  
  
“I didn’t say that,” the Doctor huffed.  
  
“But you were thinking it,” Rose told him, good-naturedly.  
  
The Doctor looked surprised and guilty, the expression of someone trying to remember if they’ve actually said something out loud — or in this case, let a stray thought wander too far field.  
  
Rose couldn’t help snickering. “No, I didn’t hear it off you. It was just your expression.” Then she went serious again. “I did hear something, though — ‘second gifts.’ What’s that? You were thinking it, earlier.”  
  
“Ah.” The Doctor glanced down, then looked up to meet her eyes again. “That’s . . . not something you — we — Time Lords usually talk about. S’ private. If you know, you don’t need to talk about it, and if you don’t know, it’s none of your business.” His face was very serious and Rose could sense how hard it was for him to find and speak the words. “We aren’t — weren’t — like humans.” He snorted. “You lot, you never stop talking. You’ll talk about anything, like the weather. What’s to talk about there? It’s the most obvious thing going, but you hash it over like it’s fascinatin’, all because you have to go running on at the mouth every second of every day . . .”  
  
Jack, who was no longer even trying to suppress the grin that the Doctor couldn’t see, opened his eyes and without the slightest flicker of disturbance through the link gave Rose an entirely physical eyeroll.  
  
Caught off guard Rose choked, trying unsuccessfully to cover a laugh with a cough.  
  
The Doctor stopped in mid-harangue and glared suspiciously at her.  
  
“Sorry,” she told him, with desperate, wide-eyed innocence. “You were sayin’ . . .?”  
  
Then it was Jack’s turn to choke . . . and that was the signal for both of them to begin laughing helplessly.  
  
The Doctor sighed dramatically, and flopped down off his elbow, radiating an impatient glower until the two humans managed to contain themselves. After a moment’s silence, when he seemed to judge they wouldn’t start back up again, the Doctor returned to the original topic. The minute he began speaking, the tone of his voice and thoughts sobered Rose and Jack completely.  
  
“There are different types of gifts given between lovers,” the Doctor said, quietly. “First Gifts are gifts of the body and emotions — where the link is rooted, if you will. Second Gifts are gifts of mind — telepathic contact, blended manifestations. What we were doing, just now. Not every relationship that started with First Gifts progressed to the Second.” He fell silent a moment.  
  
“Are there other kinds of Gifts?” Rose asked, thinking forward to what else they might expect.  
  
“There were. Not that they have much meaning anymore. Third Gifts were gifts of posterity — shared genetic material.”  
  
“Children,” Rose said, softly. No longer an option for a race of one. “What else?”  
  
“The last were Fourth Gifts — gifts of memory. Taking a part of the loved one’s memories out of the Matrix and into yourself, after their last life. Keeping them real and breathing for that much longer . . . “  
  
Rose had no idea what the Matrix was, or how it might work, but she could get a sense of it from context . . . and the timbre of the Doctor’s mind left no doubt that the Matrix no longer existed. Lost with the rest of Gallifrey, everything gone but one man and one TARDIS.  
  
“’Course,” the Doctor continued, “not all the Gifts were very _fashionable_ ” he put a wry twist on the word, “later on. Most people tended to start with Third Gifts — trading chromosomes in a genetics labs, and pretended the first two Gifts were just leftovers from Our Primitive Past.” Rose could hear the sarcastic capitalizations easily.  
  
“Not you, though,” Jack supplied with amusement, and Rose turned to look at him with the start of a smile.  
  
“No,” the Doctor agreed, biting the word short, changing the mood in an instant, and his tone of voice and mind were such that Rose to ask the next question, as much as it scared her to do so.  
  
“Did you ever . . .” she said, and broke off, completely unable to find the right words. But the Doctor understood her anyway.  
  
“Once,” he said, in that short, unhappy way.  
  
Rose was looking into Jack’s eyes, and she could see the sudden, sharp pang that went through him as well as sharing it empathically. Having this and losing it . . . Rose realized now how incredibly painful that would be. And she’d gotten angry with the Doctor, back when, for being scared to love again. She’d been so terribly clueless.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Rose whispered, and Jack closed his eyes, adding silent agreement, both humans acknowledging the Doctor’s past loss.  
  
“It was a long time ago,” the Doctor said, in the flat tone of voice that meant he wasn’t about to go making a show of his feelings. It would have worked far more effectively on people who weren’t empathically linked to him.  
  
Rose wriggled around so she could raise herself up enough to look over Jack at the Doctor. He had rolled partly on his back as he spoke, looking up at the ceiling. His face was mostly composed, except for the furrow between his eyebrows, and a thin streak of moisture running down from the outside corner of one eye. He shifted his gaze to meet her eyes, though otherwise he remained still, and his grey-blue eyes were both unguarded and unreadable. He looked more alien to Rose than he had in a long time — but that didn’t bother her in the slightest, now. He was who and what he was, and that core of strangeness would always be there. It didn’t matter. She loved him anyway.  
  
Looking at him lying there, she could see how taut and worn he was, his rangy body in stark contrast to Jack’s sleekly padded musculature. The Doctor looked weathered and tough, honed down by time into something spare and effective. It was just as clear in the lines and planes of his face, as if the physical form was a perfect reflection of the soul within — which, based on some of the things the Doctor had told them about regeneration, wasn’t necessarily a coincidence.  
  
So much pain and loss in his long life — the more she found out, the more amazing it was to Rose that the Doctor could keep going, keep caring and helping and loving. He was simply the bravest person she’d ever met, and she admired him tremendously for it. In such close contact, he could read her feelings with crystal clarity; she didn’t need to say anything.  
  
( _Tschah!/not brave/just kept breathing_ )  
  
( _Wrong/brave/inspirational_ ) Jack countered. “You can keep breathing and not keep caring,” he added verbally, the more complex concepts requiring words. “Trust me, I know.”  
  
Rose hitched herself up further, and leaned over, partially squashing Jack so that she could brush her fingers along the side of the Doctor’s face. Jack didn’t complain; if he could have moved more freely, he would have been doing the same thing.  
  
“You’re amazing,” she told him simply, “and I love you. Even when you scare the hell out of me with weird alien gifts, y’got that?”  
  
Jack’s ribcage wouldn’t expand enough for a full laugh at Rose’s phraseology, but he wheezed in appreciation. ( _Seconded_ ) he added.  
  
The Doctor stared up at her, his eyes wide, and the Storm shivered close to the surface of things, making Rose feel like she could fall down into him, forever. He didn’t say anything — Rose suspected she might never hear the reciprocal words from him. But that was all right, because he caught her hand and guided it gently to his lips, kissing her fingertips with a passion all out of proportion to the pressure he used. His cool breath flowed across her skin, and Rose shivered with a sudden surge of desires that had nothing at all to do with telepathy, or manifestations, or words.  
  
“Second Gifts are wonderful,” she gasped, “don’t get me wrong. But there’s still something to be said for the Firsts!”  
  
The Doctor sensed the faintest glimmer of her intent so that he managed not to be caught completely off-guard when Rose vaulted clumsily over Jack and ended up on top of him, her backside hitting his stomach hard enough to startle a wide-eyed huff of breath from him.  
  
He caught his breath fast enough, though, and met her assault with equal enthusiasm, while Jack, Rose’s weight off of his diaphragm, laughed like a loon and yelled at them to move around to the other side of the bed so he could _watch_ , dammit!  
  
As the link flared into full, familiar life, the TARDIS settled back, soothed, riffling a few of her less-used dimensions comfortably back and forth like an experienced card player absently shuffling a deck without conscious thought. The crew was functioning smoothly together again and all was right as she defined it.  
  
Well, except for one thing. Several layers of her consciousness peeled themselves away from their usual tasks and contemplated the badly-shredded leather trousers folded in the laundry room. Influencing something like leather — matter generated by an animal entity entirely separate from the TARDIS’s own existence — was a challenge. However, repair was a distinct possibility. And, like her master, the TARDIS enjoyed a challenge that fell within her powers.  
  
Leaving her crew to effect their own repairs, the TARDIS settled down to her chosen task and purred.  



End file.
